2011 MOBILIZING THE COMMUNITY THROUGH THE ARTS

Community-based initiative, 2011

Alutiiq Museum & Archeological Repository

The Alutiiq Museum is one of the premier cultural centers in Native Alaska. From 2000 to 2013, MacArthur Foundation Fellow Sven Haakanson, while their Executive Director, led efforts at the museum like this project that incorporated traditional Native arts education into the museum’s programs.

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Blas Aguilar Adobe Museum & Acjachemen Center

The Acjachemen are representative of the myriad of ethnic groups found along the California coast. The Blas Aguilar Adobe Museum and Acjachemen Center fosters the preservation and continuity of the tribe’s cultural patrimony.

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Diné be’ iiná, Inc. (The Navajo Lifeway)

Diné be’ iiná, Inc. (The Navajo Lifeway) works in support of Diné producers and weavers, assisting sheep, goat, and fiber producers in the Navajo Nation with technical and educational information for sustaining economic self-sufficiency.

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Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA)

The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is regarded as the foremost Native arts educational institution in the country. It offers four-year degrees in Studio Arts, Visual Communication, Creative Writing and Museum Studies. Funding for the Mescalero Water Tank Project supported an education-based cultural preservation project in which IAIA worked in collaboration with the Mescalero Apache community. The Institute’s staff worked with Apache youth to document nearly forgotten water tanks used by Apache “cowboys” during the area’s mid-20th century heyday of cattle ranching. Known as “cowboy graffiti”, these markings have now been preserved as artifacts.

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Ke Kukui Foundation

Ke Kukui Foundation supports the preservation of Hawaiian/Polynesian culture through community events, education, music and the art of hula in communities throughout Washington and Oregon.

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Kua’aina Associates

Kua’aina Associates is a cultural preservation organization that supports cultural programming across a network of Native artists and organizations, primarily in the Bay Area in California.

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Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance (MIBA)

The Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance (MIBA) is the premier basketmaking organization on the east coast, functioning as a collective and fostering the preservation of traditional basketmaking practices. In 1993 tribal baskemakers from the four federally recognized tribes in Maine (Maliseet, Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot) realized there were fewer than a dozen weavers younger than the age of 50 statewide amongst a tribal population of 6,000 and decided to create a pathway to teach this traditional art form.

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Moku O Keawe Foundation

Moku O Keawe Hula Festival is the major international hula competition on the west side of Hawaii Island, taking place annually in November.

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Sealaska Heritage Institute

The Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) provides cultural programming for the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people of southeast Alaska. SHI develops and implements programming for the preservation and perpetuation of Southeast Alaska’s Native arts and cultures. Primary constituencies are the approximately 22,000 Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian of the region and in the lower 48. While Alaska Natives comprise approximately 15% of Southeast Alaska’s total population, they comprise approximately 20% of the population in the region’s nine larger schools, and average 81% of the population in the region’s eight smallest school districts.

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